1. Stake a claim on the web. Register your own domain name. This point cannot be stressed enough. Having your own domain is like owning your own home. You want to offer your friends, family, clients and customers a place where they can relax and engage with whatever you are all about. 1&1 and BlueHost are good places to start. Registering a domain name is cheap and liberating. Whether you are a student, employee, or just adventurer, you have ideas, projects, stories and records worth owning, sharing and expressing on your terms.

2. Own your Identity. Create a personal web page or blog. A WordPress self installation (WordPress.org), is a great place to start. Don’t re-direct to outside services. You can’t claim ownership or have control over your social network accounts. Your Facebook and Twitter Pages do not make a good web presence nor can you control all of the elements in play. If you want control over your privacy, you need to refer your social networks to your own private web presence. You would not want to lose all of your favorite photos and blurbs to a FaceBook meltdown.

3. Keep a light email footprint. Get rid of old emails to keep inbox and database small. Ditch Outlook. Get Gmail or Google Apps for your Domain (Standard or Priemere). Outlook and programs like it are responsible for a major portion of technical glitches and create a dependence on databases that cannot keep up with modern demand.

4. Keep a light security footprint. Don’t be paranoid about web security. A few free tools can offer a better defense from viruses and malware and identity thieves than a $100 subscription based software. The expensive software often cripples computer performance and creates new problems that lead to wasting more time and money.  If you can’t afford a Mac, use AVG, MalwareBytes AntiMalware, Spybot S&D, Super Anti-Spyware, PeerBlock, etc.

5. Filter out the noise and control communications. Use PhoneBooth or Google Voice to create a separate virtual “office” phone line, that can filter who reaches your mobile phone and who gets stopped with voicemail.  These tools have free versions and can transcribe voice messages to email and text.

6. Increase your mobility with LogMeIn and DropBox. These tools are worth every penny, or lack thereof, as they both have free versions.  These tools will allow you to synchronize your files and remotely access your computer anywhere.  They also have mobile versions for the major smart-phone platforms.

7. Read user reviews before purchasing a gadget. Test everything you can and do your homework before you buy.  USE MORE THAN ONE SOURCE WHEN REVIEWING A PRODUCT. Read user reviews from geek websites like NewEgg, Amazon and TigerDirect. NewEgg has an excellent geek user community who review and put products through their paces.

8. Pursue the Liquid Computing Model and invest in a desktop computer, if only to use it as a home server to sync your files. Think of it as a mother ship for your digital lifestyle. If you can’t afford one, team up with a friend or relative and create a community server. It’s not complicated, it’s just simple concept of moving some tasks and resources to a central location. Don’t believe anyone who tries to convince you that these things are too complicated to learn or do in a weekend.

9. Rip and record every CD, DVD, book, song and video you legally own and store it on your home server. HandBrake, DVD Decrypter to rip DVDs (which is perfectly legal by the way). Use liquid formats AKA mobile formats that are recognizable by just about any device or platform (doc, jpg, pdf,) and avoid saving data to proprietary formats that require a special program that has no other competition.

10. Use Format Factory to convert media files to liquid formats and easily put them on your portable media players. Proprietary formats, e.g. AAC, QuickTime, and Apple’s new book standard are not universal and lock you into certain programs which will always cost you more money than a liquid format that can be bought and sold on multiple competing markets.

11. Own your media. Don’t use middle man media management tools to organize and control your music and movies. Have a system in place, organizing files and folders before you even launch iTunes. Use VLC Media player to watch every video format under the sun.

12. Use hybrid search techniques. Combine social search tools with your Google search results to quickly find an answer to your question that other humans found useful. Try StumbleUpon, WebMynd, Xmarks add-ons for FireFox/Chrome.  Turn on the enhanced searched results and find the most useful content and results in a flash. This method can help you find answers to technical problems and locate the best resources on the web and instantly corroborate the search engine world (SEO) with the social world (SMO).

13. Add trying Ubuntu Linux to your bucket list. This particular Linux flavor has come a long way over the years and is very user friendly. You can download or order a Live CD to try the operating system and see how you like it. If you are using Linux, you can rest assured that you are computing on a solid foundation that is always looking out for you. That can never be said of Microsoft or Apple’s  platforms.

14. Relying on middleware is a bad habit. Always, Always, ALWAYS pursue the principles of Digital Liquidity speed, simplicity, independence, control and mobility.

Use a PC once but leave before it makes you too hard.

Use a Mac once but leave before it makes you too soft.

Surf. Don’t be afraid to explore new things on the web.

But if you remember nothing else, trust me on # 14

Goals

Learn what is truly important to you and what defines you in the digital space. You’ll get a sense of the size, scope and involvement and wrap your head around your digital lifestyle.

Identify what holds you back.

Free you from those Limitations.

Develop a deep understanding and desire for mobility. Many people have crippled mobility by using devices, services and solutions

Exercise

In order to become more productive in the digital domain, it is important to make some choices to define who you are.  A good starting point is to make separate lists of  the software (including web apps and networks) and hardware (including devices) where all of your digital “stuff” is stored.  Make a list of all the applications, accounts, and devices you are aware of and stick to what comes quickly to mind.

Things to include in your lists:

-Hardware and mobile devices. Be sure to write down any additional laptops, netbooks, PDAs, smart phones, etc.

Start with your computer. Look at your desktop(s) and write down all the software you need and love.

-Mobile Applications- List your mobile apps.

-Content- Not just the files and  folders but your tweets, blogs, blurbs, status updates and profiles, include the networks that you use.

Think about the photos of things you look at, like, and create.

-Make a list of dependencies (software or hardware) no matter how seemingly ridiculous. If you are addicted to your CrackBerry, Shazaam, or anything else write it down.

This might take you a while but try to focus or take a brief glance at your computer, phone and web browser and note what you have, thinking in terms of how often you use it.

A. Disaster strikes and you must move on.

Now, imagine a major catastrophe were to happen and all of your digital stuff was in danger. Imagine if, for whatever reason, you could only back up everything to a smart phone, or a device that runs a different operating system. What would you bring? What could you bring? How could you bring everything? Use your list and answer the questions and feel free to say “I have no idea” and move on.

1. If the devices and hardware were stolen or destroyed, what would you miss the most?

2. What aspect of your computing experience would you miss? What are your favorite interactions with your operating system?

3. What were you’re hardware requirements to enjoy your current computing experience? Is it a cell phone, iPod, 5 year old computer? Write it down.

4. Is any of your information or data stored anywhere else and if so where?

5. If the web applications, tools and social networks, changed or closed shop, what might you lose? Where would all your content go?

6. Could all of your information fit onto a mobile device? How much space would it take?

For most people, it’s what’s on the inside that counts! You’re not your Operating System or your hardware just as you are not your house. There are very few cases where you are really dependent and locked in to a specific operating system or system. Your hardware, devices and operating systems are just shells and apartments for your digital selves. If you were to lose a limb, would you still be you? Identifying our digital lifestyles by operating system is a complete joke. We are pressured to do so due to the marketing ploys of big companies and most give in to that pressure because they believe it will help them make complicated choices quickly and pain free. Your digital identity has a lot more to do with content, filters, experience and interaction.

B. Prioritize and Sort by format.

In this exercise, use your answers from the previous questions to help you prioritize your software lists and rewrite them in terms of the general type of information or output (formats) they carry.

For example, PhotoShop deals with images, so I would write down images. If I am a designer, my answers may be more involved and specific with the file type like PSD files, brushest and so on. Your list can be as simple or complicated as you want but try to cover all aspects.

What You May Notice

The first thing you may think about is the importance of backing up all your stuff, but take it a step farther. What exactly are you backing up and why?

1. Your answers will reveal what you really care about, what your dependent on, and how it limits you. These answers offer hints to your identity as well as the virtues and vices of your current digital lifestyle.

2. When reduced to their most liquid forms,  most people have a similar list of irreplaceable information: contacts, images, documents, content, contributions profiles, settings, plug-ins, files, applications, filters.

3. We share common hardware requirements for our experience. That is to say that there is a certain standard of hardware performance we all seek (not necessarily have) in terms of graphics, processing power, memory and space, that allows us all to lead our digital lifestyle in the way we prefer. No one chooses a slow computer. Most people are tricked or forced into one by marketing ploy or economic status. We desire computers that are fast and easy to learn; (Speed and Simplicity).

4. The Importance and Power of Lists. Simply having a list of where all your stuff is stored is a great resource. You will become aware of just how much of your life is spread out across the web and various devices. Your list can help you restore your files and applications and be used as a reference when making purchasing decisions.

The Big Revelations

There are several aspects of your lifestyle that make up your digital identity are often overlooked.

Content, Contributions and Profiles

What makes you, you on the web? In this day and age you might instantly think to your social network, blog, website, or other content, but I bet they didn’t make it onto your list. You may also have private content that you keep all to yourself that is on the web. Where are all these contributions stored? Social Networks, various profiles, accounts, and contributions might not have even made it onto your list but they are incredibly important to you. These things tell others who we are and serve as reminders to ourselves. What would you do if Facebook shut down? Are your photos, blogs, backed up in an space that you control? Are your best one liners and status updates recorded and stored in a vault somewhere? For many people the answer is no.  If you are a typical connected consumer, your digital identity is likely overly dependent on commercial structures, applications and devices. For example, without Facebook, you probably would not have a web presence, personal records, photo albums or contact information.

Mobility is liberating

If you were able to cram all the important stuff on a mobile device and synchronize it anywhere, you wouldn’t be so dependent on your computer, or reserved to a desk and office chair.You would be free to move and live again.

Personal Story-Losing a lifetime collection of media

Once upon a time, I stored all my media,  all the music and movies I obtained over a few decades, on a single, very large hard drive. One day that hard drive fried and with it went all of my data. So after I replaced the drive, I discovered that luckily for me, much of what I had lost was easy to find and obtain again. The difficulty was not recovering the content but remembering the titles and albums. In this day and age, the list, the inventory that made up my digital DNA was more important than the data itself. If I had the list, I could always hunt down the media. The list could fit on the smallest Flash drive and would have saved me hours of brain-wracking searches to recover my collection. To this day I use various tools to inventory my collections and make simple logs of the lists that are stored as text files. I can carry it with me in my pocket and  if catastrophe were ever to strike again I could use my lists and any number of methods to recover everything.

Personal Story-Ending My MySpace Dependency

I love to write and blog. I started blogging

Tips

1. Take the time to write down the various recipes of your digital lifestyle, making blueprints and digital DNA. This will help you get in the habit of protecting your stuff, preserving ownership, control as well as coming in handy when backing it all up.

2. Make an inventory, a simple list, of all your media files, favorite applications and web resources. (I will mention specific tools to help you do this in future lessons.)

3. Try to use liquid formats as often as you can so you can take your content with you, anywhere, to any OS or device. Images and text are the best places to start.

4. Send your lists to your phone or consider emailing them (encrypted or unencrypted) to a trusted friend for safekeeping.

5. Don’t just backup your data. Backup your lists.

6. Consider switching to applications that aren’t platform dependent (IE programs that work on Apple, Linux and Windows platforms.)  This is  a good habit to develop to keep you working in formats that can be taken anywhere. Furthermore, No single application should stop you from exploring and finding the best computing experience. You might be happier on something else and never know it because of your dependency on a platform.

Conclusion

The recipe for your digital lifestyle is not a list of applications or devices.  These are not the essential ingredients to your identity. What is truly valuable to you and everyone else is the  information, the content, contributions, filters, preferences, settings, and arrangement that is unique to your individual experience. It’s not the applications but the unique data set and the input information you provide. It’s true that hardware and devices are expensive and valuable, but they can be replaced easily, where as family photos and your unique arrangement of all your digital stuff cannot.

Mobility is important to Everyone!

These elements make up your Digital DNA and are most important. Often times the most valuable digital assets in our lives can be expressed in a simple image or text file. These files are more liquid and can be transferred anywhere. Make a new list, a list of lists to make.

The Power of Listing is amazing! Think of all the hundreds/thousands of websites, applications, images, resources you know and love. Keeping a list of them is more portable and easy to access than backing it all up.

Controlling the environments where you input and store information is very important. Having an independent HQ on the web is an irreplaceable resource.